Rolodex Journalism


June 21, 2002


MIKE PESCA: So I don't know if you realize this about Bob -- no, don't blush, Bob -- but he has another life as a columnist for Advertising Age Magazine where he reviews television commercials. Increasingly over the last 15 years he's been called on not only to criticize but also to punditize -- that is, act as an expert on advertising for virtually every major news outlet across America and around the world. He rarely says no. With so much experience as a journalist and an expert -- this week alone he was called on to comment about the advertising festival in Cannes, September 11th, the Martha Stewart insider trading controversy and corporate image advertising -- Bob got to thinking how so few people are called on again and again to deliver so many opinions. [FILM CLIP FROM THE MOVIE CASABLANCA PLAYS] [UH-OH MOVIE MUSIC]

CLAUDE RAINS AS CAPTAIN RENAULT: Major Strasser's been shot. Round up the usual suspects.

BOB GARFIELD: Here's the difference between Captain Renault, Prefect of Casablanca police -- and the media. [EXPECTANT CHORD] [POLICE WHISTLE, POLICE SIREN] Renault -- had a whistle. Otherwise the methodology is pretty much the same -- a story breaks, expert analysis is required, turn to the rolodex and round up "the usual suspects." If it's a legal issue, find Alan Dershowitz. If it's an FBI investigation, call ex-G Man James Kallstrom. Conservative politics --William Kristol. Advertising -- [LAUGHS] -well -- modesty forbids. [CLIP OF INTERVIEW PLAYS]

INTERVIEWER: Are there any advertisers that would say that O.J. Simpson could be good for them?

BOB GARFIELD: Not any advertiser of substance. You, you know-- [LAUGHS] this endorsement business is not just about name recognition and-- and notoriety. It's about respect and credibility and likability, and O.J.'s never going to regain that. 70 percent of the American people still thinks the guy got away with murder. It's just not going to happen. You know they could acquit the Menendez brothers too, but they're not going to be the Doublemint twins. [END OF INTERVIEW]

BOB GARFIELD:Did whoever called me to book that interview call me because I was involved in the O.J. story? No. Because I'd written something especially trenchant on the subject? No! Because I was just the right person to provide context and detail? No. It was because the story concerned advertising pitchmen, and in her rolodex under A for Advertising, she found my name. And it happens every day in broadcast, in print -- thousands and thousands of times with varying degrees of suitability and a whole lot of deja vu. Robert Thompson is a professor of journalism and mass media at Syracuse University.

ROBERT THOMPSON: Because journalism goes off at the alarmingly quick rate that it does, people do collect rolodexes; they're people they know they can get a hold of on a moment's notice, and I think there, there is this kind of aristocracy of commentators that gets created as a result of it.

BOB GARFIELD:I myself have landed in that Burke's Peerage of punditry, but there's another one of my peers who is really without peer. He is Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and probably the most quoted non-government official in Washington. He may be listed in a lot of rolodexes under P for politics and say, C, for Congress. He should be under O -- not for Ornstein, but for O-negative. He's the universal donor, spilling his life's blood 2 to 3,000 times a year. In the past two weeks he's been flooded with calls about homeland security, but--

NORMAN J. ORNSTEIN: I've had calls on the budget; I've done phone calls on Ben Gilman. I've done things on the farm bill--

BOB GARFIELD: You get the point. And Ornstein gets the calls because he's a dependable source on damn near anything, which is handy but in terms of broadening debate on a given subject, not necessarily ideal. Furthermore there's the question of actual reporting versus just filling-in-the-blanks. Not to point any fingers, but let's just say it isn't too hard to write a story before conducting an interview leaving spaces with notations like "Ornstein quote here." The King of Quotes himself acknowledges that.

NORMAN J. ORNSTEIN: I find now compared to 10, 15, 20 years ago a lot more laziness on the part of reporters --people who turn to the same sources because they pretty much know what they're going to get and there isn't any use in looking around.

BOB GARFIELD:The result, says Professor Thompson, is the usual suspects phenomenon which for all its advantages to reporters and producers can be antithetical to genuine inquiry.

ROBERT THOMPSON: I think the rolodex in the end becomes part of the-- is one of the most important tools in the toolbox of a good journalist. I think what we may be looking for is a need for that rolodex to have a more diverse set of voices within it.

BOB GARFIELD:For instance a search of the New York Times database for the last 2 years yields 42 stories quoting consumer advocate Gene Kimmelman, head of the Washington office of the Consumers Union. Now Washington is just lousy with consumer advocates, but Kimmelman rules. Of course the Times has nothing on the Washington Post which in the same period quoted Kimmelman 58 times, including on January 23rd, 2001 an astonishing 3 times in 3 separate stories - all on section fronts. That's right - the coveted trifecta. Kimmelman chuckled over his breakfast. Meanwhile in the Washington Post newsroom reporter Peter Goodman ambivalently accepted the congratulations of his colleagues because while Kimmelman was the horse that won 3 races in one day, Goodman was the jockey in the mount. Yes, one reporter wrote all 3 stories quoting the same man.

PETER GOOD

MAN: It's both an anomaly and a symptom of a larger problem. There is no question that the beat reporter in Washington is harried and frantic and is too prone to doing the easiest thing which in this case was reaching someone who's, you know, delightfully easy to get a hold of and gives good quote. So for that I am guilty -- we the members of the media are guilty. And you know, I could have-- I, I should [LAUGHS] -- let's be real! You know, I should have worked harder to get some other voices in the paper.

BOB GARFIELD:You can't much fault Goodman, to switch back to Professor Thompson's metaphor, if he is guilty of nothing more than using the right tool for the job on 3 separate jobs that happened to coincide. If the job calls for a hammer, you grab a hammer. What reporters and producers need to do, Thompson says, is to keep a large and diverse toolbox so that they're not using a hammer to put in a screw. Strangely, the biggest toolboxes of all probably belong to cable news. For all its sensationalism and superficiality, cable may provide more diversity of expert analysis than the largest newspapers, owing not to its nuanced coverage -- we know it doesn't provide that - but simply to its insatiable appetite for ever more experts to fill all those chairs on camera 24 hours a day. Each network has a central database of 50,000 names. So precious is his rolodex collection to Fox Newschannel's chief booker Eric Spinato that each evening before he leaves work he places his under lock and key.

ERIC SPINATO: It could be a janitor. I don't know who's looking through my rolodexes. They could take someone's home number that, if they trusted me with it, how am I - I'm, I'm being negligent by leaving it out for others to scour through.

BOB GARFIELD:Imagine a scenario. You're at the beach. Your wife is standing with her back to the ocean. Next to her are your 7 rolodexes. You see a huge wave gathering and it's just about to break. What do you do?

ERIC SPINATO: [LAUGHS] Grab the rolodexes in one hand and grab the wife's hand on the other - and leave. The rolodex is, is our life.

BOB GARFIELD: That's because while the problems of two people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, the fate of 50,000 experts and pundits could affect the Hannity and Colmes Show and Special Report with Brit Hume and the O'Reilly Factor -- maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow -- but some day and for the rest of your life. [INSTRUMENTAL OF SONG AS TIME GOES BY PLAYS]

MIKE PESCA:Coming up, Lou Dobbs swims against the current of Arthur Andersen coverage; film festival madness; and the Edward R. Murrow-Crackerjack connection.

BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media from NPR.